Amelioration, attrition, and reflexivity : new narrative discursive strategies in Robert Schumann's Drei Fantasiestücke, op. 73

In this report, I expand Byron Almén’s narratological discursive strategies by adding three new strategies to clarify different actantial profiles in Robert Schumann’s Drei Fantasiestücke, op. 73. By drawing upon the works of Almén and Robert Hatten, I formulate the strategies of amelioration, attrition, and reflexive. Following methodological concerns, I explore various applications of discursive strategies in conjunction with these new strategies in each movement. In the first movement discursive strategies are employed in a tragic archetype, and thus outside the comedic archetype that Almén presents discursive strategies in. Amelioration, drawn from Hatten’s gestural work, is the discursive strategy I suggest for the first movement. The second movement explores attrition, a new strategy Almén posits in the comedic archetype but that he never analyzes in A Theory of Musical Narrative. Finally, I incorporate narrative phases, another strategy of Almén’s, with a reflexive discursive strategy to show the interaction between discursive strategies and other forms of analysis. These three strategies may be used to provide more nuanced narrative interpretations.